He Traded Me for Land, Now I Write the Rules novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Trade
Damon Falk comes home from London, deletes the apartment from the delivery app and shows Adeline the messages in which he sold her to Everett Lyle for land. She says fine, and sets her first rule in writing.
Damon Falk had been gone two weeks, closing a deal abroad.
He was an Alpha, and he ran a fund as well as a pack.
When his plane landed that evening, he skipped the pack house and came straight to his apartment.
He kept me awake until after midnight.
Then his teeth pressed against the side of my neck.
My wolf went still and waited for the bite it had waited four years for.
Damon kissed the spot and pulled back. He always did.
A claiming bite would have made us mates in front of every pack in the city. Without it there was no vow and no registry entry, only the two of us in his bed.
I lay there a while before I noticed the condom box on the nightstand was empty.
I was the one who restocked it. Damon had never noticed it running low.
I opened the delivery app on my phone.
He took the phone out of my hand. "Hold off on that."
I looked at him.
He sat against the headboard and deleted the apartment from the address box. Then he typed in a different street.
"Whose house is that?" I asked.
"Everett Lyle's. In Greenwich."
Everett Lyle was the Alpha of the Cold Spring pack. Greenwich was his land, not Ashgate's, and Ashgate was Damon's pack.
Damon's voice was flat and businesslike. "Addie, how long have you been with me?"
My fingers closed on the sheet.
"Four years."
"That's a long time." He smiled down at me. "Time for something new."
My breath stopped.
My wolf felt it before I did. It didn't snarl. It just stopped reaching for the Alpha beside it.
Damon turned the phone around and held it out. His messages with Everett Lyle were open on the screen.
Everett had written: "The West Side rail yard rights are yours tonight if you do three things. End your registry entry on Adeline Hartigan. Withdraw your protection. Send her to my house."
Damon had answered: "Done."
Protection isn't ownership, and no Alpha can sign away a grown woman's yes.
But I had no pack and no family, and Damon's name held up my whole life.
My housing, my work card and my brother's school and doctor all ran on his protection.
If he pulled it, all of it ended by morning.
Everett Lyle knew that. So did Damon.
I knew those rail yard papers, too. I had written every page of that deal over six months.
Damon had signed in June, on the yellow tab I stick to the last page of everything, and he had never turned a sheet back.
"Don't look at me like that," Damon said. "Everett won't hurt you."
My throat was tight. "Why me?"
"He asked for you by name."
"Why did you say yes?"
He looked at me. The question plainly made no sense to him.
"I'm giving up something with no mark and no paper, for rights I've chased since spring. I come out ahead any way you count it."
"Why wouldn't I say yes?"
That was the last of my hope.
A few minutes earlier he had said my name against my ear. His scent of cedar and pipe tobacco was still on my skin.
Now he could take it off me and send me to another Alpha's house, and he hadn't asked me once.
I sat up. My foot touched a shopping bag beside the bed.
Inside was a dark blue box, and in the box were steel cufflinks set with tiny moonstones.
I had chosen steel because silver burns wolves. I had checked every metal part.
Damon had mentioned, once, that his favorite pair was scratched. I had remembered.
It had taken me weeks to find these.
I had meant to give them to him tonight.
I pushed the box to the bottom of the bag.
"Fine," I said.
His brow creased. "That's it?"
"What else is there? You've decided, Alpha Falk. Do I have a choice?"
The smile slipped off his face. In four years I had never called him by his title in that bed.
"Enough, Addie. Come here."
Every other time he said that, I went.
I stayed where I was.
The Alpha pressure rolled into the room and sat on my shoulders. My wolf wanted to drop its head.
I kept my back straight.
He pulled the pressure back almost at once. Forcing me with his rank, in that bed, was a line he couldn't take back.
"Don't make a scene," he said. His voice went coaxing. "It's settled. Stay tonight and go in the morning."
"I'm not making a scene."
I picked my clothes up off the floor and dressed.
When I had tied the last strap of my dress, I looked at him again.
"If you're handing me to him, you don't touch me again."
His eyes went flat. "You take things well."
"You said you hated trouble. I made sure you never had any."
I picked up the bag and my phone and went to the door.
"You'll be back by Sunday," Damon said. "Where else would you go?"
"Greenwich."
Downstairs, a black car sat at the curb, and the driver already had the back door open.
He told me Mr. Lyle had said to wait as long as it took.
On the seat was a pen and a clipboard with one blank page.
"Mr. Lyle thought you might want your terms in writing before you arrive," the driver said.
I got in.
I wrote my brother's name at the top of the page. Under it I wrote: Rule one.
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